1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a character recognition method and apparatus for recognizing characters, such as numerals or letters of the alphabet.
2. Description of the Prior Art
The reading of data attached to articles presently involves a method in which the data is provided in the form of bar codes and in which the bar codes are read by means of a bar code reader. Data reading by this method is preferable because it can be practiced by means of a remarkably-simple apparatus, but it is difficult for human beings to recognize and directly read such data in the form of the bar codes attached to the articles. Therefore, this data reading operation is very inconvenient either after the articles have entered the market or when the bar code reader is broken. Accordingly, a system in which the sale of conveyance of articles or their warehousing and delivery are administered on the basis of the data read by the bar code reader is especially vulnerable to difficulties and disadvantages.
These disadvantages can be eliminated to some extent by printing on the articles alphanumeric characters that can be easily recognized and understood by human beings. However, for automatic reading, a machine or apparatus is required to recognize the characters. For an apparatus for recognizing the characters, an optical character reader (which is referred to below as an "OCR") is well known. The OCR performs a sampling operation by scanning the image of a character to be recognized with a TV camera, by converting the video signal to binary form and by dividing this binary signal into lattice-shaped picture elements. Then, the OCR recognizes the letter by segmenting the image into picture elements of regions suitable for pattern recognition from the signal which has been made discrete by the sampling operation, by matching the segmented image signal (i.e., the symmetric pattern for recognition) with a standard pattern which is stored in advance, and by selecting the most-likely category found by the matching operation. The pattern recognition technique in the OCR thus-far described has been applied not only to character recognition, but also to the recognition of the shape of or a flaw in an article.
Now, although the recognition of characters attached to articles can be accomplished by means of the aforementioned OCR or the like, the pattern recognition method of the prior art handles a tremendous amount of information and requires a large-scale apparatus including an electronic computer so as to process that tremendous amount of information quickly.